Esther and Waiting

Great teaching today at mentoring group… and God took the bit and slammed it home.

We’re so often in times of waiting. Faith grows, maturity grows, in those times of waiting. But as consumers of Christian literature, even as readers of the Bible, we see the stories of those who have gone before us as a whole – we don’t sit with them in the weeds.

Like Esther. You read the story, it’s only a few chapters – less than a page between “gets taken” and “becomes queen”. But look at it from her perspective.

You’re hanging out, doing your thing, and the knock on the door comes. “The king has proclaimed that all pretty virgins are to report to the palace forthwith. This means you”. No one ever talks about what Esther was thinking that day… what kind of person she was. She was a human, so she had dreams, plans for her future, plans for tomorrow. And KERPOOF. Gone.

And what a nice place she ends up in. Not. A bunch of strange women who are all – whether they want to be or not – in competition with one another. You have to have lived through junior high to imagine how fun that was… -shudder- The last thing she was told is to not let anyone know that she’s an Israelite. Great. No traditions, nothing.

And she sits. And sits. And sits. Six months for the herbal prep and another six months getting pretty. They probably learned court etiquette and the basic bits of how to be a pleasant concubine (dance, instrument, conversation, storytelling?) but otherwise… sitting. The most likely result is that your one night with the king will result in being put in the second harem for the rest of your life, to be brought out maybe once in a year. No children unless you get lucky, just life in a box. A meaningless, boring existence.

So, how does Esther feel for that year? Does she feel the weight of significance, as she’s about to save her people and change history? No. Because she didn’t know that was what she was there for.

How many times do we feel like that? We’re waiting, and waiting, and waiting… we know we’re going to be used, because we know God doesn’t waste anything and we’re willing. But for what? And we’re BORED. We live in this world, this world that tells us that we should be actualizing our potential every single second. And we look around with our physical eyes, and we’re not.

We’re not doing anything, we’re just sitting.

It takes faith to sit and wait when it’s waiting time. It takes a connection to the eternal. A faith that God will return the years that the locust has stolen.

But we never talk about that, never talk about the waiting time. We only talk about the journey of faith in the whole, from above, the part where you see the Big Moment. Faith is about more than the Big Moment – it’s about all the other moments that got us there.

So it really does become an act of extreme and fanatical and almost cultish faith that we wait, and wait, and wait, for God. Like the guy trapped on his roof in a flood, who trusts in God to save him, but ignores all the times God sent boats and human hands to help.

I’m really quite conflicted about it. The “how long?” question is a difficult wrestling match. I know how long, but it is painful to see others whom don’t wait getting on with life, and actually having an ok time with it.

That’s when you have to have your connection to God in shape, IMO. I can tell when it’s me pushing myself vs. God pushing me to do something. It’s resisting the former and obeying the latter that’s the trick. One doesn’t want to miss opportunities (dude on the roof) but at the same time, one doesn’t want to grab at what isn’t meant for one.